1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to content addressable memory (CAM). More particularly, it relates to generating multiple CAMs using a single CAM.
2. Description of the Related Art
Content addressable memory (CAM) is a type of memory unit in which the data stored is addressable by its content. During a compare operation, the CAM compares an input word with the words stored in the CAM. The CAM determines whether each entry is a match or a mismatch to the input word. If a match to the input word is found, the CAM may return a list of one or more storage addresses of the entries that matched the input word and/or one or more data words associated with the entries that matched the input word.
Some chips may include multiple CAMs. For instance, a chip may implement a CAM with a large number of rows as two separate CAMs, each having one half of the rows. Splitting a large CAM into multiple smaller CAMs increases the overall performance of the CAMs but increases the area and power consumed by the CAMs. Thus, there is a need for reducing the amount of area and power consumed by multiple CAMs in a single chip.